Mais les vrais voyageurs sont ceux-là seuls qui partent
Pour partir; coeurs légers, semblables aux ballons,
De leur fatalité jamais ils ne s’écartent,
Et, sans savoir pourquoi, disent toujours: Allons!
“Le Voyage,” Charles Baudelaire

We’ve spent the past few weeks scouring the Web and our ever-growing stacks of history and culture books to assemble what we feel (hope?) will be the best cross-section of palinka culture in Hungary — from producers to retailers to lovers to bloggers to, well, whomever wants to sit down and yap with us for a bit over a glass or two.  In a language we can understand, hopefully.  Mi nem beszélnek magyarul.

Here’s the map so far.  We’re especially excited about visiting Agardi, which makes some of the finest palinka we’ve tasted; there’s a curious palinka museum to the east of Budapest attached to a brewery that might prove interesting; and the list of palinka “knights” (complete with Middle Age-inspired outfits and pastoral gatherings and castles) surprisingly seems to grow.

View Plum Crazy: Hungary 2010 in a larger map

Our timing is good, too; one of the recently elected government’s campaign promises was to lift the ban on home distilling.  This promise made it into Fidesz’ economic plan, but there’s plenty of turmoil and controversy (and the legislative influence of the EU).  Yet it remains to be seen whether bread and circuses (or palinka and ethnic baiting) will keep Hungarians distracted from other, more pressing, issues.  There will be no shortage of things to talk about while at the bar…

Tags: hungary travel

This entry was posted on Monday, July 19th, 2010 at 9:10 pm and is filed under Uncategorized, hungary, maps, travels. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.